ART.
MR. HERKOMER ON HIS ETCHINGS.
To be so versatile an artist as Mr. Herkomer, is no doubt to find it difficult to address one audience at a time ; and in his Etching and Mezzotint Engraving ; Lectures delivered at Oxford, he appears to address several. To the vague public, perhaps, that does not etch but attends lectures on etching, are addressed those analyses of the charm of etching, of the mood of the etcher, those descriptions of the damage done to his clothes and carpet. " The peculiar charm," they are told, that belongs to the art, " cannot be adequately described in words,—it must be felt." " The etcher is under a spell whilst at work, for he is not wholly conscious of the actual character of the work he is doing; but by an inexplicable sub-conscious action of the brain, which amounts to a spell, his hand produces something that his plain, every-day, wakeful mind could not have devised or done by cold, calculative effort.
He has a " wide soul," and there is " a wild fascinating disorder" about his feelings when at work. These state- ments are corroborated by a frontispiece in which we behold, not only the frenzied mien of the etcher, but the Spell itself represented as standing on its head. Again, the differ- ence between etching and painting is analysed. A painter
can do nothing with " the mere motive ; it must be bathed in an artistic effect before it attracts him," whereas "an etcher can make nature turn on the pivot of his own individuality." Of this scene no illustration is vouchsafed.
But the would-be practitioner is also addressed. Heads of Houses, Professors, and the honourable women not a few, who represent leisure and culture in a Slade Professor's audience, are provided here with technical instruction after the manner of Hamerton and other text-books, though they are warned that the only chance of success in the art is to " throw themselves headlong into it." Brother-painters, too, are invited with heedless generosity to take up a neglected - art; a " strong appeal" is made for " figure-subjects ; " a demand that bad drawing shall be unobtrusive ; and alto.
gether it is difficult to remember that these ten years past the trade of etching in this country has been flourishing and inflated, and the art crying out to be neglected again. It ought to be added that Mr. Herkomer claims credit for two technical discoveries,—one, a method of whitening the plate so as to judge of the effect while drawing; the other, a method of multiplying the impressions from a "monotype." The example here gives a very deadened version of the monotype qualities.
Then there are kind words, mingled with gentle admonitions, for all and sundry,—etchers, dealers, societies. The Painter- Etchers are applauded, and the Portrait-Painters, Mr. Whistler and Mr. Wehrschmidt, Rembrandt, and the pupils of the Bushey school. These last are ready to do original work, " if only encouraged." There is an air of irrepressible benediction as in the poet's lines,- " Hail, noble edifice, stupendous work !
(God bless the Regent and the Duke of York !)" and it is more in sorrow than in anger that the writer sees "an intelligent, well-educated, and even art-loving person stand before an etching of undoubted beauty, without showing an atom of interest in it." This, he says, is a "sad sight," and seems to think it curable.
All this medley would be amusing and harmless enough, but there are certain passages that suggest what was the real preoccupation of the writer in publishing it, and to review the book without noticing these, would be to ignore a motive that is studiously enough kept in the background. It will be remembered that, almost a year ago, Mr. Herkomer published a work called A Pictorial Music-Play: an Idyl, with illustrations described and priced as etchings. He was thereupon charged by Mr. Pennell, an expert in matters of process-reproduction, with having employed in a large number of those plates the process of photo-engraving, instead of the autographic procedure commonly understood by the word "etching." The plates, it was suggested, were photogravure reproductions of pen-and-ink drawings, and were therefore improperly advertised as etchings. Mr. Herkomer admitted that in some cases photography had been employed to transfer a pen-and-ink drawing to the plate, but held to it that the final result was properly described as etching, and promised a vindication of his procedure before his University audience. The present book, then, is a tardy answer to a newspaper attack, although the assailant is never mentioned in its pages. Now, it may be observed that Mr. Herkomer, if he had so chosen, might have confused the issue at the outset by appeal- ing to the looseness in vulgar usage of the word " etching ;" he might have claimed the license of an amateur in his descrip- tion of the plates by that title. But in his defence as given here, he does not rely on any consideration of that kind. He fully accepts the position that, if his part in those illustrations had been limited to the original pen-and-ink drawing, the final result could not properly be called an etching. Even supposing the subject drawn on the plate by the artist, if he leaves the biting to be done by another, the artist is not an etcher ; he is only a "draughtsman on copper" (p. 16). To leave the biting to a "practical man" is "worse than composing a piece of music in piano form, and then giving it to another musician to score for orchestra." (It may be explained that the importance of this biting being done by the artist lies in the fact that half the effect of an etching is obtained by deeper biting of some lines than of others : this process is, in fact, an indispensable part of the " drawing.") The issue, then, is clear : " a mere re- production of a pen-drawing is quite another thing "—i.e., from what was done in the case of the plates in question—(p. 30), and Mr. Herkomer goes on to tell us what was done. He was at a loss, he explains, for a method of getting his pre- liminary sketch exactly transferred to the copper plate, not having then struck on his whitening plan; and in those cases where he was anxious for exactitude, he had recourse to photography for this preliminary transfer of the sketch. But there mechanical process stopped. " The lines were done by the artist, and bitten-in by the artist ; and that, with original design, constitutes an original etching." The plates, further, were "afterwards rebitten and worked all over." To this Mr. Pennell, in the National Observer of the 13th inst., retorts that the account is ambiguous. Was the artist, he asks, who bit the lines, the same as the artist who did them ?—and he farther seems to throw doubt on the statement that any con- siderable work was expended on the plates after the first transfer was bitten-in. Mr. Herkomer explains the uniform quality of the lines throughout,—those that, he asserts, he added later, and those of the first drawing, by the use of a closed-up pen-nib, instead of the ordinary etching- needle. Mr. Pennell challenges him to produce the original pen-drawings for comparison with the printed illustrations by a jury of duly qualified persons. On two points of fact, it will be seen, Mr. Pennell now challenges Mr. Herkomer, and this quite apart from any matter of opinion as to the amount of autographic work that would turn the photographic transfer into an etching. There for the present the matter rests ; but it is obvious that Mr. Herkomer cannot afford to leave those aspersions on his procedure unrefuted, with a due regard to his own reputation or that of the bodies with which he is officially connected. Also, that to delay the reply till he can embody it in another course of lectures to an inexpert audience, will be a needlessly formal step. An etcher, while at work, may be "not wholly conscious of the actual character of thtwork he is doing." If he estimates it, when done, at the price paid for etching and values it as such, it will not suffice for him to remain "subconscious" under the charge
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